Al, great post and I think something you said earlier came back to me on this one. You were talking about self-promoters like Woo Woo Wickers. That is what this is all about, self-promoters — the worst of them being Sianis himself, who was known for using anything and everything to promote his tavern. Most people use these sotries to promote themselves, a product, a business, heck probably most importantly thier own words in ink. That is why it exists — and why it should end.

First?

They tell me everyday how much better they are than the Cubs. How they are the class of baseball and the greatest thing since sliced bread. Yet they seem to be quite obsessed with our silly little team.

End my mini rant.

But I was composing my post while you were putting this up. I stand by it though. You gotta have some fun. That is what baseball is all about.

..outside of winning of course.

I have been telling any Cubs fan who will listen that all of the ancillary garbage is just that, garbage. If you want the national media and other baseball fans to treat the orgainization with respect you cant promote the sideshow crap. When Cub fans buy into it all of it, we give the media a free license to report about it and basically promote it.

It starts with the fans and it has to end with fans.

Certainly Crane didnt help the cause last week, but that is for another post…

But if we treat all the curse stuff as just a big joke then perhaps others will realize that this isn’t the reason the Cubs are losing.

See my post.

While I know seems inocuous, really just promotes the “kids stuff – fun and games” mentality that alot of people place on these ideas. It diminishes our team, it speaks to all those casual fans that don’t care whether the team wins or loses because its the “Cubbies”. Like we really are not taken seriously in the sport of baseball, but its ok because we have a cute little bear in our logo. It pisses me off, and no I will not embrace and such stupidity.

I thought having Marge Schott rub Schottzie’s dog hair, on Lou Piniella’s chest, for good luck, in Cincinnati, was pretty creepy.

The spraying of the holy water in the Cubs dugout before the NLDS paled in comparison, but I still didn’t like it.

much on here since, you know…. but I agree that this is a good time to get all this off our chests, cleanse ourselves from all the bull crap and hopefully our group of fans here on BCB come back next year determined to focus on the discussion of our baseball team and nothing else.

Thanks for pointing out the fact that all of us here have to learn to be better fans because the media and fans of other teams are certaintly not going to stop what they’re doing.

Well said!

You guys all need to take a breath. While I agree that the curse talk is anoying and if I hear another Bartman taunt I’m likley to snap, I’m trying to find an alternative way to vent. By the way, no one seems to be talking about the ‘Lovable Loser’ moniker that the Cubs have been carrying. I have pointed out to many that this is not true anymore since the Cubs have had 4 winning seasons in the last 6.

As mentioned in an earlier thread, Not Bruce Froemming and myself are both of the Eastern Orthodox persuasion (he’s Greek, I’m Russian), and we both found the act of a priest performing a holy sacrament in a less-than-religious, trying-to-be-funny, appease-the-media setting to be in extremely poor taste.

I had the chance to talk with my priest about this the other day – he’s a Cubs fan, fairly open-minded, and generally a fun guy, but obviously takes being a priest seriously. I basically asked him what self-respecting Orthodox priest would even agree to do such a thing to begin with. And his response was interesting.

He said “Well….” and paused, then gave that fatherly, half serious, half bemused look that they must teach in the seminary, “…they did have to go all the way to Valparaiso (Indiana) to find one”.

crack me up… ;-)

During the playoffs, it seemed like fans (obviously not all of them, but enough) were waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak – expecting the worst (and receiving the worst).

It’s time for it to change. No more worrying about the past history (and made-up curses) of the team and how it affects the current lot.

For many years I worked on a community Rose Parade float, in the construction and decoration phases. Construction on a Rose Parade float begins 10 months before the parade, and decoration usually takes place the week between Christmas and New Years.

On New Years Eve, the float would make its way from my little town via city streets to Pasadena, a drive of about 10 miles or less. We would generally pull out between 8-10 p.m. and with a police convoy, would get to the parade staging area (this happens throughout Southern California, with floats coming from as far as 30 miles away at times.)

The La Canada Flintridge T of R Association had been very successful over the years, garnering major trophies on a fairly regular basis, despite being a totally self-sustained, volunteer organization.

At any rate, when leaving the decoration yard, we would always have to go past St. Bede’s Parrish church, and one year someone asked the priest to bless the float with Holy Water. And that year, not only did we not win an award, but the float broke down.

The next year, nobody asked the priest, but he saw the float come by and ran out in his vestments to bless the float. We didn’t win anything again.

So it became the standing joke that for us to ever win again, we had to sneak past the church to ensure that we didn’t get blessed. I remember one of the bosses at the site saying “Everything will be fine, so long as we can get past St. Bede’s without the priest seeing us.” I think eventually somebody told him “thanks but no thanks.”

They haven’t won a Stanley Cup since 1961. Could someone invent a curse concerning the Blackhawks? There’s got to be a good cock and bull story about why their drought has lasted so long. (Open, joking) Don’t give me any stories about lack of talent or players inexplicably doing poorly in the playoffs. That can’t have anything to do with it. It must be some evil curse. (Closed, joking)

Think about it, the last two years the Mets have utterly failed in getting to the postseason, suffering heartbreaking collapses. But I have never heard anyone blaming it on a “curse”.

I wish somebody had the thought to sneak some sort of black cat or something into the park and have it walk in front of their dugout in advance of their collapses. Then the media could have had something to write about. Of course, much like the Billy Goat, I bet some enterprising sportswriter can come up with something retroactively.

As I’m sitting here I recall someone mentioning the fact that the Cubs have their cute Cubbie logo. Like that might be contributing to their failures. What’s so intimidating about a Cardinal. Or a Red Stocking!

of this part of being a Cubs fan, its never ending. It would be nice to just be able to enjoy the baseball and never have to hear about this crap again.

All this stuff becomes ritualistic and adds to the bad mythology of our team totally obscuring the good mythology. After a while it’s not baseball that we worship but the myths and then we and the organization don’t change. We cling.

It’s all about national popularity. Of all the teams you mentioned which one could be more of a NATIONAL draw than the Cubs?

BoSox, right? Should be everyones answer; BoSox without a shadow of a doubt. They had their drought shoved in every orifice because of their popularity. If no one followed them who the hell would care?

Forget about why, focus on the popularity of the team. The reason the CUBS have this is because of their national draw. Come on, name another team other than the BoSox that has bus-loads of fans from out of state way out of state, flocking to their ball yard, year after year after year. You can’t, I can’t, SWL can’t, Shanghi can’t, DGU can’t, Cwyers can’t, Sue can’t no one can, why? Not because we’re idiots. It’s because this [national popularity] doesn’t occur with other teams.

When the media harps on this (and why I continue to tell everyone the media’s sole job is to expound on controversy or worse yet create controversy) about the Cubs; it’s because they by DEFAULT will have a LARGE audience.

Do what I do, when someone wants to harp about it, tell them to shove it. A now ex-friend of mine, let’s call him Gregory, works at my company here in the area but a different town, a self-proclaimed convert of Cubs fan to Sox fan, just could not let it go. The first few years it was cute, then it became annoying, then even disturbing. But this time he went too far. He’s more interested in the Cubs losing than what happens to the Tribe, Cats and Twinkies. What an idiot. He couldn’t get his facts straight and it was not worth the oxygen I breath to try to correct him. I’d rather sever a relationship, not a strong one by any means, than to deal with such ignorance.

And I agree with it.

Lou Piniella talked about the team having a swagger — I think that we can as a fan base, too.

Now, that doesn’t mean doing some of the crap that was posted during the season, like the Cub fan who mocked complete stranger Brewer fans at the Houston-Cubs series in Milwaukee beacuse the Brewers were losing. It doesn’t mean being sanctimonious a-holes or acting like we’re God’s gift to MLB. It does mean that we can carry ourselves with confidence and ignore the ancillary bullshit that other fan bases and the media try to pin on us.

In no way to I think that the fans were responsible for game 1, and I think that argument is crap. But I do think that it couldn’t hurt if we were a fan base that expected to win — but didn’t panic when something went wrong and had a “here we go again” mentality. I realize that the only way for that to happen may be for them to win it all.

C’mon people. Stop blaming anything other than the Cubs not playing well enough! It’s not the fault of the media hyping curses. It’s not the fault of any fans that believe in the curses. It’s not the fact that it’s been 100 years. It’s not Wrigley Field. It’s not day games. It’s not L flags or anything else that can be construed as a symbol of futility, etc. etc. I’m sick of people making excuses for why the Cubs haven’t won. They haven’t won because they weren’t good enough. They just so happen to have not been good enough for a very long time.

Let’s just get it through our heads that as much as we’d like to help them win. We can’t. This is something they have to do themselves. It might be harder for them because the pressure for the Cubs to win is way more than for any other team. But that’s too bad. They have to deal with it.

And deal with it, they are-for the most part. They’ve gone to the postseason 3 times in the last few years! I don’t see them letting up. One of these times they are actually going to do it. And once they do, the monkey will be off their backs and they will keep winning.

PS- I sincerely don’t believe the Cubs are being looked at as “lovable losers” so much anymore. I’ve heard from some people that are not Cubs fans from other parts of the county who never thought of them that way at all because they’ve been in contention so much lately. They are a younger generation of fans that are getting used to seeing them do fairly well. They are shocked when the media talks about them that way. Trust me, the loser label and the curse talk will all go away once they’ve won a WS.

I think the media’s attention to curses is targeted at the “casual” fan, not those of us who follow games on a daily basis. I have explained the Cubs’ curse to many friends who think the story is “cute” or “colorful.” I think it adds to those fans’ experiences — see the ivy and the scoreboard, drink an Old Style in the bleachers, watch the boats sail on Lake Michigan, get their pictures taken by Harry’s statue…. Those are the people the Tribune wants to bring to the ballpark, and those are the people to whom the Tribune wants to sell newspapers. So it is wishful thinking to ask to get past the discussion of curses. That said, I agree the “AC” sign needs to go.

I live in SF, and the Giants have gone out of their way to create the “Curse of Captain Eddy”, which actually has an interesting, yet contrived story behind it. The best, however, is the Curse of Colonel Sanders in Japan.

…but your explanation for why they seem to be so readily attributed to the Cubs doesn’t really work for me. You insist that it’s essentially laziness in journalism. But those are the same journalists who covered the White Sox. Weren’t they just as lazy in their Sox coverage. To me, it’s about selling the game to people who otherwise wouldn’t care. I’m guessing most people here simply enjoy the game. There could be no crowd, no stadium, no beer….whatever. We just love to watch. But for the majority of Americans, there needs to be a story. Until this year, there was no story to the Rays. All you had was baseball. Baseball will get you crowd of 8000-10000. A story will get you more. And most of us enjoy the story as well. It’s just that in the case, it gets played over and over. So yeah, I’d like to see it stop. But I’m not gonna take any moral stand against it. The Cubs for their part are selling their team however they need to so they can afford their payroll. I’d rather them sell the curse to the public than a new ballpark.

Fact is the Cubs were the laughingstock of baseball for very many years. Total inepitude in the front office and in the field. The arrival of Dallas Green in 1982 dramatically changed the equation, but sadly Green got fed up with the Tribune Company and told them to pound sand. Cubs were never the same again until 2003 rolled around.

The problem is no longer getting from point A to B in terms of making the playoffs. We’ve almost become as proficient at that at the New York Yankees or Boston Red Sox. Nope, the problem these days is getting from point B to C, with C being winning the National League Pennant for the first time since 1945. Will worry about point D after we can find a way to win a pennant.

all of that crap is BS. Look at the other factors that have ‘cursed’ this team…the College of Coaches, ownership by the Trib etc. They just need to focus on baseball. If Kenney did the holy water thing on some kind of side deal, it needs to stop. Let Lou and the players take care of it on the field, period!

until they win. It makes for good copy and ratings in their eyes. We are like Britney Spears (The Good or the Bad one)….a trainwreck/former trainwreck that everybody wants to watch.

I wish it would go away but it won’t until we win.

That the guy with the goat actually cursed the team? whereas the other supposed curses where made up by the media and/or fanlore?

So that might be why it was initially talked about, I think its kind of funny….I mean did this guy actually think he could bring a farm animal into a baseball stadium? Was that ever common practice?

by Josh explaining the curse…never happened?

The late great Mike Royko had a great column about this.

Basically saying it wasn’t a stupid old goat but stupid old ownership and stupid management.

and it’s not easy to get there. Look at the Rockies last year and this year.

I don’t believe in curses. I believe that if Soriano stops swinging at sliders two feet off the plate, he’ll have a better chance of success in the post season. I believe that 7 walks, 4 errors and 6 runs in three games is not the way to win baseball games.

If the Cubs are fortunate enough to make it to postseason play in 2009, I’d like to see a pissed off team that refuses to do anything but execute in all phases of the game. And then let the chips fall where they may.

and wouldn’t let that happen again. I was wrong. Maybe the third time is the charm. 3rd time meaning 2007, 2008, 2009!

before finally winning it all and they are probably the class of baseball right now. At least in terms of baseball development/decisions/winning.

Terry Francona said that after the Sox got creamed 19-8 in Game Three of the ALCS, he told his club “all he have to do is just win one game”. I took this to mean that the team needed to forget all about Bucky Dent and Bill Buckner and totally commit their focus on the immediate at-bat or the pitch they were about to throw – nothing else.

Kevin Millar is free to spin this any way he wants but the crux of the matter is that the Red Sox had their minds on business from Games 4 through 7. They were confident and locked in and let their immense talents do the talking. They weren’t going to give the taunts of the media and the crowds an inch of their mental space.

 why ???….cause sport writers make money of BS stories like this….I remember when David Robinson came into the NBA and in his 5th year writers said he was too soft he couldn’t lead the Spurs to a title, the Spurs were a regualr season winner…blah, blah. And finally when they did put a team around him he took 2 titles…(One of them when he rode into the Sunset). Same thing with Jordan how he couldn’t carry the Bulls…he’s a selfish player….and now he’s the Demi-God of Basketball.
 The fact of the matter is no matter what our teams do….the media will always bash the bad side of it or why we didn’t win. (I get more flack about the Spurs winning 4 Championships in 9 years…and of course because it’s a small market team…which everyone hates). But with OUR Cubs in a big market…same story.
We make the postseason …NO MATTER if we win our division , be a wildcard winner…we will always hear that until WE WIN IT!!! When we don’t ohhhh they will ALWAYS blame the curse. Once we do it will make those writers shut their pieholes.
 The Cowboys haven’t won a playoff game in 12 years…. The ‘Hawks havent won the Cup since the 60’s, so I understand fustration from all angle of my teams.
We just need to play…play ..play… bulid a team, with caracther (sorry), desire to win, and a desire to BE HUNGRY, a manager who KNOWS to make the right choices, and a organization that will get their head out of their ass wake up, and stop being the laughing stock of the MLB.
That’s why why Steve Stone got fired…. He spoke the truth about the Cubs Org and it’s players and it’s desire to be a winner.

Gen Patton once said " America loves a winner ….and will not tolerate a loser…because the thought of losing is hateful to Americans"

Go CUBS Go!!!

P.S: Leave Ronnie alone he’s just a passionate fan as we are…nobody played the game harder than he did despite his conditions with diabeties.He would love to see the Cubs win as bad as we do….he is such your diehard fan in the box instead of the stands .

Unless Tommy Lasorda snuck up there and stole the binoculars!

Some of us have paid no attention to it for years. Nothing new to see here.

But if only they’d gotten rid of that AC sign, we would’ve won! It’s the Curse of the Catuli! Sheesh, is this what we can expect from the rest of this series? Please tell me you get serious next week.

The above link does not work when clicked on. It is correct – just cut and paste to get to Dr. Marshall’s website.

The link below is a video of Jeff Sparks, one of Dr. Marshall’s protégé pitchers, who did make it to MLB, briefly; plus Comments by Dr. Marshall as to why Jeff Sparks was not given a chance to continue.

Watch the video completely for a comment about Larry Rothschild, who was affiliated with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays at that time.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7203244128642418248&q=source:010193324824063277087&hl=en

Someday…